Ladies, do you think that life is all fun and games for your male counterparts? As a multitude of men would have you know, that’s certainly not always the case.

The following list chronicling all the expectations and financial burdens placed on Japanese men both before and after marriage has been circulating the web. Of course, not to rule out the many challenges that women also face, myself being a woman, perhaps it would be better to just say that life can be a real drag for everyone.

With people generally getting married at a later age than in our parents’ generation, it sometimes feels like we have to throw out the whole rule book on marriage and starting a family in order to write a brand new one. But what do you do when your potential partner already has a bunch of crossed-out pages? Japanese website MyNavi Woman conducted a survey of 111 women between the ages of 22-34 and asked them, “Would you marry a man who’s been divorced”?

I’m not going to lie, I love transformation shows – home improvement, weight loss, makeovers, you name it. But plastic surgery shows are one of those that I keep on the down low, even more of a guilty pleasure than the others. They make the changes their participants go through seem like a piece of cake, often skipping over the majority of the long and painful process with snazzy montages and cut scenes.

Opinions are divided on plastic surgery, but whether you’re pro or anti-scalpel, you can’t fail to be amazed by some of the almost magical work these surgeons can perform. And of course some of the most dramatic changes are coming out of South Korea, one of the world’s hotspots for plastic surgery. Check out these photos; we promise we won’t tell anyone you did.

The internet isn’t all trolls and memes. Sometimes, out there in the wilds, there is genuine human connection and empathy to be found. And in this case it’s surfaced on Japan’s own version of Yahoo! Answers, of all places. Read on for one man’s saddening plea for help with his struggling marriage, and the moving advice he received online.

Earlier this month, we brought you an article about foreign men sounding off on the difficulties of having a Japanese wife. While some of their complaints were understandable and others were just downright silly (you can’t deal with tofu? C’mon!), international relationships in real life don’t always end as happily as in the movie My Darling is a Foreigner.

Continuing the international marriage theme in a more unfortunate direction, we now bring you the voices of some foreign men who have gone through the experience of divorcing Japanese women. You might be surprised to learn that the main catalyst for divorce in each of their scenarios was rarely related directly to cultural differences. Instead, it seems that a combination of other factors played the decisive role.

In a survey conducted by Japanese magazine Nikkan Spa, 200 married male office workers aged between 20-40 were asked whether they had ever considered divorcing their spouse. As part of our recent love and relationships series, we’ve translated the results below for your delectation. Get ready for some seriously blunt answers and eye-opening reading.